FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
NAME
FIGlet - display large characters made up of ordinary screen characters
SYNOPSIS
figlet [ -cklnoprstvxDELNRSWX ] [ -d fontdirectory ]
[ -f fontfile ] [ -m layoutmode ]
[ -w outputwidth ] [ -C controlfile ]
[ -I infocode ] [ message ]
DESCRIPTION
FIGlet prints its input using large characters (called ``FIGcharac‐
ters'')made up of ordinary screen characters (called ``sub-characters'').
FIGlet output is generally reminiscent of the sort of ``signatures'' many
people like to put at the end of e-mail and UseNet messages. It is also
reminiscent of the output of some banner programs, although it is ori‐
ented normally, not sideways.
FIGlet can print in a variety of fonts, both left-to-right and right-to-
left, with adjacent FIGcharacters kerned and ``smushed'' together in var‐
ious ways. FIGlet fonts are stored in separate files, which can be iden‐
tified by the suffix ``.flf''. In systems with UTF-8 support FIGlet may
also support TOIlet ``.tlf'' fonts. Most FIGlet font files will be
stored in FIGlet's default font directory.
FIGlet can also use ``control files'', which tell it to map certain input
characters to certain other characters, similar to the Unix tr command.
Control files can be identified by the suffix ``.flc''. Most FIGlet con‐
trol files will be stored in FIGlet's default font directory.
You can store FIGlet fonts and control files in compressed form. See
COMPRESSED FONTS.
USAGE
Just start up FIGlet (type ``figlet'') and then type whatever you want.
Alternatively, pipe a file or the output of another command through
FIGlet, or put input on the command line after the options. See EXAMPLES
for other things to do.
OPTIONS
FIGlet reads command line options from left to right, and only the last
option that affects a parameter has any effect. Almost every option has
an inverse, so that, for example, if FIGlet is customized with a shell
alias, all the options are usually still available.
Commonly-used options are -f, -c, -k, -t, -p and -v.
-f fontfile
Select the font. The .flf suffix may be left off of fontfile, in
which case FIGlet automatically appends it. FIGlet looks for the
file first in the default font directory and then in the current
directory, or, if fontfile was given as a full pathname, in the
given directory. If the -f option is not specified, FIGlet uses
the font that was specified when it was compiled. To find out
which font this is, use the -I3 option.
-d fontdirectory
Change the default font directory. FIGlet looks for fonts first
in the default directory and then in the current directory. If
the -d option is not specified, FIGlet uses the directory that was
specified when it was compiled. To find out which directory this
is, use the -I2 option.
-c
-l
-r
-x These options handle the justification of FIGlet output. -c cen‐
ters the output horizontally. -l makes the output flush-left. -r
makes it flush-right. -x (default) sets the justification accord‐
ing to whether left-to-right or right-to-left text is selected.
Left-to-right text will be flush-left, while right-to-left text
will be flush-right. (Left-to-right versus right-to-left text is
controlled by -L, -R and -X.)
-t
-w outputwidth
These options control the outputwidth, or the screen width FIGlet
assumes when formatting its output. FIGlet uses the outputwidth
to determine when to break lines and how to center the output.
Normally, FIGlet assumes 80 columns so that people with wide ter‐
minals won't annoy the people they e-mail FIGlet output to. -t
sets the outputwidth to the terminal width. If the terminal width
cannot be determined, the previous outputwidth is retained. -w
sets the outputwidth to the given integer. An outputwidth of 1 is
a special value that tells FIGlet to print each non-space FIGchar‐
acter, in its entirety, on a separate line, no matter how wide it
is.
-p
-n These options control how FIGlet handles newlines. -p puts FIGlet
into ``paragraph mode'', which eliminates some unnecessary line
breaks when piping a multi-line file through FIGlet. In paragraph
mode, FIGlet treats line breaks within a paragraph as if they were
merely blanks between words. (Specifically, -p causes FIGlet to
convert any newline which is not preceded by a newline and not
followed by a space character into a blank.) -n (default) puts
FIGlet back to normal, in which every newline FIGlet reads causes
it to produce a line break.
-D
-E -D switches to the German (ISO 646-DE) character set. Turns `[',
`\' and `]' into umlauted A, O and U, respectively. `{', `|' and
`}' turn into the respective lower case versions of these. `~'
turns into s-z. -E turns off -D processing. These options are
deprecated, which means they probably will not appear in the next
version of FIGlet.
-C controlfile
-N These options deal with FIGlet controlfiles. A controlfile is a
file containing a list of commands that FIGlet executes each time
it reads a character. These commands can map certain input char‐
acters to other characters, similar to the Unix tr command or the
FIGlet -D option. FIGlet maintains a list of controlfiles, which
is empty when FIGlet starts up. -C adds the given controlfile to
the list. -N clears the controlfile list, cancelling the effect
of any previous -C. FIGlet executes the commands in all con‐
trolfiles in the list. See the file figfont.txt, provided with
FIGlet, for details on how to write a controlfile.
-s
-S
-k
-W
-o These options control how FIGlet spaces the FIGcharacters that it
outputs. -s (default) and -S cause ``smushing''. The FIGcharac‐
ters are displayed as close together as possible, and overlapping
sub-characters are removed. Exactly which sub-characters count as
``overlapping'' depends on the font's layoutmode, which is defined
by the font's author. -k causes ``kerning''. As many blanks as
possible are removed between FIGcharacters, so that they touch,
but the FIGcharacters are not smushed. -W makes FIGlet display
all FIGcharacters at their full width, which may be fixed or vari‐
able, depending on the font.
The difference between -s and -S is that -s will not smush a font
whose author specified kerning or full width as the default lay‐
outmode, whereas -S will attempt to do so.
If there is no information in the font about how to smush, or if
the -o option is specified, then the FIGcharacters are ``over‐
lapped''. This means that after kerning, the first subcharacter
of each FIGcharacter is removed. (This is not done if a FIGchar‐
acter contains only one subcharacter.)
-m layoutmode
Specifies an explicit layoutmode between 1 and 63. Smushmodes are
explained in figfont.txt, which also provides complete information
on the format of a FIGlet font. For the sake of backward compati‐
bility with versions of FIGlet before 2.2, -m0 is equivalent to
-k, -m-1 is equivalent to -W, and -m-2 is equivalent to -s. The
-m switch is normally used only by font designers testing the var‐
ious layoutmodes with a new font.
-v
-I infocode
These options print various information about FIGlet, then exit.
If several of these options are given on the command line, only
the last is executed, and only after all other command-line
options have been dealt with.
-v prints version and copyright information, as well as a ``Usage:
...'' line. -I prints the information corresponding to the given
infocode in a consistent, reliable (i.e., guaranteed to be the
same in future releases) format. -I is primarily intended to be
used by programs that use FIGlet. infocode can be any of the fol‐
lowing.
-1 Normal operation (default).
This infocode indicates that FIGlet should operate nor‐
mally, not giving any informational printout, printing its
input in the selected font.
0 Version and copyright.
This is identical to -v.
1 Version (integer).
This will print the version of your copy of FIGlet as a
decimal integer. The main version number is multiplied by
10000, the sub-version number is multiplied by 100, and the
sub-sub-version number is multiplied by 1. These are added
together, and the result is printed out. For example,
FIGlet 2.2 will print ``20200'' , version 2.2.1 will print
``20201''. Similarly, version 3.7.2 would print ``30702''.
These numbers are guaranteed to be ascending, with later
versions having higher numbers. Note that the first major
release of FIGlet, version 2.0, did not have the -I option.
2 Default font directory.
This will print the default font directory. It is affected
by the -d option.
3 Font.
This will print the name of the font FIGlet would use. It
is affected by the -f option. This is not a filename; the
``.flf'' suffix is not printed.
4 Output width.
This will print the value FIGlet would use for outputwidth,
the number of columns wide FIGlet assumes the screen is.
It is affected by the -w and -t options.
5 Supported font formats.
This will list font formats supported by FIGlet . Possible
formats are ``flf2'' for FIGfont Version 2 .flf files and
``tlf2'' for TOIlet .tlf files.
If infocode is any other positive value, FIGlet will simply exit
without printing anything.
-L
-R
-X These options control whether FIGlet prints left-to-right or
right-to-left. -L selects left-to-right printing. -R selects
right-to-left printing. -X (default) makes FIGlet use whichever
is specified in the font file.
Once the options are read, if there are any remaining words on the
command line, they are used instead of standard input as the
source of text. This feature allows shell scripts to generate
large letters without having to dummy up standard input files.
An empty argument, obtained by two sequential quotes, results in a
line break.
EXAMPLES
To use FIGlet with its default settings, simply type
example% figlet
and then type whatever you like.
To change the font, use the -f option, for example,
example% figlet -f script
Use the -c option if you would prefer centered output:
example% figlet -c
We have found that the most common use of FIGlet is making up large text
to be placed in e-mail messages. For this reason, FIGlet defaults to 80
column output. If you are using a wider terminal, and would like FIGlet
to use the full width of your terminal, use the -t option:
example% figlet -t
If you don't want FIGlet to smush FIGcharacters into each other, use the
-k option:
example% figlet -k
If figlet gets its input from a file, it is often a good idea to use -p:
example% figlet -p < myfile
Of course, the above can be combined:
example% figlet -ptk -f shadow < anotherfile
example% figlet -cf slant
Finally, if you want to have FIGlet take the input from the command line
instead of a file:
example% figlet Hello world
Other Things to Try
On many systems nice effects can be obtained from the lean font by piping
it through tr. Some you might want to try are the following:
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' ' ()'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' './\\'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' ' //'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' '/ '
Similar things can be done with the block font and many of the other
FIGlet fonts.
COMPRESSED FONTS
You can compress the fonts and controlfiles using the zip archiving pro‐
gram. Place only one font or controlfile in each archive, and rename the
archive file (which will have a name ending in .zip) back to .flf or .flc
as the case may be. If you don't rename the file appropriately, FIGlet
won't be able to find it.
FIGlet does not care what the filename within the .zip archive is, and
will process only the first file.
The .zip format was chosen because tools to create and manipulate it are
widely available for free on many platforms.
THE STANDARD FONTS
Here are a few notes about some of the fonts provided with FIGlet. You
can get many other font from the Web site
http://www.figlet.org/ This location should also contain the latest
version of FIGlet and other related utilities.
The font standard is the basic FIGlet font, used when no other font is
specified. (This default can be changed when FIGlet is compiled on your
system.) The controlfiles 8859-2, 8859-3, 8859-4, and 8859-9 are pro‐
vided for interpreting those character sets, also known as ISO Latin-2
through Latin-5 respectively. The character set 8859-1 (ISO Latin-1) is
FIGlet's default and requires no special controlfile.
Closely related are the fonts slant, shadow, small, smslant (both small
and slanted), smshadow, (both small and shadowed), and big. These fonts
support only Latin-1, except that big supports Greek FIGcharacters as
well; the controlfiles frango (for Greek text written in Latin charac‐
ters, so-called ``frangovlakhika''), and 8859-7 (for mixed Latin/Greek
text) are provided.
The ivrit font is a right-to-left font including both Latin and Hebrew
FIGcharacters; the Latin characters are those of the standard font. The
available controlfiles are ilhebrew, which maps the letters you get by
typing on a U.S. keyboard as if it were a Hebrew keyboard; ushebrew,
which makes a reasonable mapping from Latin letters to Hebrew ones; and
8859-8, which supports mixed Latin/Hebrew text. Warning: FIGlet doesn't
support bidirectional text, so everything will come out right-to-left,
even Latin letters.
The fonts terminal, digital, and bubble output the input character with
some decoration around it (or no decoration, in the case of terminal).
The characters coded 128 to 159, which have varying interpretations, are
output as-is. You can use the appropriate controlfiles to process
Latin-2, Latin-3, or Latin-4 (but not Latin-5) text, provided your output
device has screen or printer fonts that are appropriate for these charac‐
ter sets.
Two script fonts are available: script, which is larger than standard,
and smscript, which is smaller.
The font lean is made up solely of `/' and `_' sub-characters; block is a
straight (non-leaning) version of it.
The font mini is very small, and especially suitable for e-mail signa‐
tures.
The font banner looks like the output of the banner program; it is a cap‐
itals and small capitals font that doesn't support the ISO Latin-1 exten‐
sions to plain ASCII. It does, however, support the Japanese katakana
syllabary; the controlfile uskata maps the upper-case and lower-case
Latin letters into the 48 basic katakana characters, and the controlfile
jis0201 handles JIS 0201X (JIS-Roman) mixed Latin and katakana text.
Furthermore, the banner font also supports Cyrillic (Russian) FIGcharac‐
ters; the controlfile 8859-5 supports mixed Latin and Cyrillic text, the
controlfile koi8r supports the popular KOI8-R mapping of mixed text, and
the controlfile moscow supports a sensible mapping from Latin to Cyril‐
lic, compatible with the moscow font (not supplied).
The fonts mnemonic and safemnem support the mnemonic character set docu‐
mented in RFC 1345. They implement a large subset of Unicode (over 1800
characters) very crudely, using ASCII-based mnemonic sequences, and are
good for getting a quick look at UTF-8 unicode files, using the con‐
trolfile utf8.
ENVIRONMENT
FIGLET_FONTDIR
If $FIGLET_FONTDIR is set, its value is used as a path to search
for font files.
FILES
file.flf FIGlet font file
file.flc FIGlet control file
DIAGNOSTICS
FIGlet's diagnostics are intended to be self-explanatory. Possible mes‐
sages are
Usage: ...
Out of memory
Unable to open font file
Not a FIGlet 2 font file
Unable to open control file
Not a FIGlet 2 control file
"-t" is disabled, since ioctl is not fully implemented.
This last message is printed when the -t option is given, but the operat‐
ing system in use does not include the system call FIGlet uses to deter‐
mine the terminal width.
FIGlet also prints an explanatory message if the -F option is given on
the command line. The earlier version of FIGlet, version 2.0, listed the
available fonts when the -F option was given. This option has been
removed from FIGlet 2.1. It has been replaced by the figlist script,
which is part of the standard FIGlet package.
ORIGIN
``FIGlet'' stands for ``Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters''. Inspired by
Frank's .sig, Glenn wrote (most of) it, and Ian helped.
Most of the standard FIGlet fonts were inspired by signatures on various
UseNet articles. Since typically hundreds of people use the same style
of letters in their signatures, it was often not deemed necessary to give
credit to any one font designer.
BUGS
Very little error checking is done on font and control files. While
FIGlet tries to be forgiving of errors, and should (hopefully) never
actually crash, using an improperly-formatted file with FIGlet will pro‐
duce unpredictable output.
FIGlet does not handle format characters in a very intelligent way. A
tab character is converted to a blank, and vertical-tab, form-feed and
carriage-return are each converted to a newline. On many systems, tabs
can be handled better by piping files through expand before piping
through FIGlet.
FIGlet output is quite ugly if it is displayed in a proportionally-spaced
font. I suppose this is to be expected.
Please report any errors you find in this man page or the program to
<info@figlet.org>
WEBSITE AND MAILING LIST
You can get many fonts which are not in the basic FIGlet package from the
Web site http://www.figlet.org/ It should also contain the latest ver‐
sion of FIGlet and other utilities related to FIGlet.
There is a mailing list for FIGlet for general discussions about FIGlet
and a place where you can ask questions or share ideas with other FIGlet
users. It is also the place where we will publish news about new fonts,
new software updates etc.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the FIGlet mailing list, please send
email to figlet-subscribe@figlet.org or figlet-unsubscribe@figlet.org or
visit the following web page: http://www.figlet.org/mail‐
man/listinfo/figlet
AUTHORS
Glenn Chappell did most of the work. You can e-mail him but he is not an
e-mail fanatic; people who e-mail Glenn will probably get answers, but if
you e-mail his best friend:
Ian Chai, who is an e-mail fanatic, you'll get answers, endless conversa‐
tion about the mysteries of life, invitations to join some 473 mailing
lists and a free toaster. (Well, ok, maybe not the free toaster.)
Frank inspired this whole project with his .sig, but don't e-mail him;
he's decidedly an un-e-mail-fanatic.
Gilbert "The Mad Programmer" Healton added the -A option for version
2.1.1. This option specified input from the command line; it is still
allowed, but has no effect.
John Cowan added the -o, -s, -k, -S, and -W options, and the support for
Unicode mapping tables, ISO 2022/HZ/Shift-JIS/UTF-8 input, and compressed
fonts and control files. He also revised this documentation, with a lot
of input from Paul Burton.
Claudio Matsuoka added the support for .tlf files for version 2.2.4 and
performs random hacks and bugfixes.
As a fan of FIGlet, Christiaan Keet revised the official FIGlet documen‐
tation and set up the new FIGlet website at http://www.figlet.org/ (and
the corresponding ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/)
SEE ALSO
figlist(6), chkfont(6), showfigfonts(6), toilet(1)
v2.2.5 31 May 2012 FIGLET(6)